Prerequisites ------------- To build the software, you need * python (of course); I haven't bothered to make things work with python 2.3 any more, so you'll need 2.4, though it'd be easy to make things work with 2.3 again. * a working C compiler (I'll lift that at some point -- the binary search doesn't profit that dramatically from the C implementation) * sufficient python support to build extensions (on common linux distributions, this means you have to install a package like python-dev, python-develop or somesuch. * If you want to see nice math, you'll have to have latex and dvipng on your path. Otherwise, you'll be stuck with TeX source (which isn't all that bad, compared to, e.g., MathML...) * 7zip if you plan to use HTML dumps. Installing the software ----------------------- Basically: sudo python setup.py install The warnings you may see don't hurt, though. If there are lots of cryptic error messages, it probably means that your python is missing components for building extensions; this only happens if your python is your distribution's and should be fixed by install python-dev or somesuch. If you have no root access, read http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/EasyInstall#creating-a-virtual-python Or follow these easy steps (assuming you're using some Bourne-derived shell, which you probably are if you are not sure):: cd # go to your home mkdir vpython # make a root for your private python installation # get a nifty script that sets your private python up wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/virtual-python.py # run the thing python virtual-python.py --prefix=~/vpython # fix the path -- you may want to add this to your startup scripts # later export PATH=~/vpython/bin:$PATH cd smallwp # or wherever you unpacked smallwp python setup.py install The setup script may download some components of EasyInstall. This is normal. As stated in the comment above, you will want to add the line with "export" above to your .bashrc or .profile. .. vi:tw=72:et: